I realise most of our readers are adults - so I’ll ask you this:

Do you keep your phone in your bedroom overnight?

One finding from our latest study - led by PhD student Meg Pillion - found that 1 out of every 3 parents of a teen has a specific rule - that their teen’s phone is out of their bedroom overnight.

Admittedly, not all teens follow their parents rules. They’re tricky little ninjas. Some of them will sneak around in the dark, get their phone, and bring it back into their bedroom.

But the teens who comply with their parent’s rules around technology get more sleep.

How much more sleep?

Do you really think I’m gonna tell you the ending of this story right now?

Nope, this is like James Cameron’s movie Titanic. You know something about the ending, but it’s best enjoyed when you go on the journey.

Understanding A Correlation

KB: “There’s a .90 correlation between teenagers’ bedtime - and when they say they put their phone off”.

Prof MG: “Hmm. Bedtime has a new meaning now…”

The year was 2015 and KB - aka, Kate Bartel - was analysing her survey data from 4 countries (Australia, Canada, The Netherlands and Norway) from her 2nd study of her PhD - first starting by looking at correlations.

Many people don’t understand the value of a correlation. And some may not care. But they should - because it speaks to the truths of the world we live in.

A correlation is a quantification of a link between two things - in this case ‘the time when someone stops using their phone’ and ‘their bedtime’.

The number of a correlation can range from zero (r=.00) to one (r=1.00).

As you can imagine, a zero correlation means there isn’t a relationship between two things. Take for example one finding in Kate’s 1st study - where she found a correlation between ‘Watching TV’ and ‘sleep’ of r=.06. - that’s really close to zero!

This means if you watch 30min, or 2 hrs, or even 6 hours of TV before bed has virtually no connection with your sleep (assuming you have a regular bedtime).

This was something Meg also found in the 1st study of her own PhD.

But when you get a correlation of r=.90 - this means you’re virtually measuring the same thing.

Yep - bedtime should not be defined as ‘the time we go to our bedroom and try to fall asleep’. It should be …

When Do You Stop Using Your Phone At Night?

See what I did there? I finished the sentence, yet also asked you a question.

Anyways - think about it. Think about your own ‘phone behaviour’ before you sleep.

Is that rectangular glow the last thing you see at the end of your day?

Kate knew if we were to improve sleep, then we need people to stop using their phones earlier. So her final study of her PhD did just that. You can read about it in more detail here.

But the two big things we learned were:

• stopping your phone use earlier meant you got 100 minutes more sleep that week, and

• barely anyone wants to stop using their phones earlier!

Well, at least teenagers.

Eventually Kate had to finish her PhD - but then a new PhD student strolled along in the form of Meg.

Meg’s been taking off from Kate’s research. Trying to answer an intriguing question:

If the simple act of stopping your phone use earlier is rewarded with so much sleep, what are things that help that happen?

Enter Meg’s new study - published this week in Sleep Medicine X (meaning it’s free for anyone to read - right here).

Working Together. Not.

Unlike us adults, teenagers have people who they live with who tell them what to do. Their parents.

Remember when that happened to you? Did your parents say something like “It’s for your own good”?

Or maybe it’s just my (psychological) upbringing ….

Anyways, in the case of Meg’s new study - our parents were right.

Teenagers who complied with their parent’s rules around evening technology use slept ~24 min more per school night. Multiply that by 5 school nights, and you get 120 minutes (2 hours) more sleep.

That’s what happens when parents and teens work together.

When they don’t (ie, teens don’t follow the rules) - they sleep just as badly as the teens who have parents that don’t give a toss (ie, no rules around technology).

It’s pretty clear that evening phone use has a strong correlation with sleep.

What is incredibly unclear is the mixed message.

Why have I been minimising the effects of technology use on sleep - yet I’m also saying that the phone is bad for sleep?

The Recipe

I’ve done a few talks over recent years about technology use and sleep, and in the title I’ll use the phrase - “One Size Does Not Fit All.”

Generally speaking, technology use has no-to-little connection with our sleep. Relatively speaking, we should be looking at other causes with more scrutiny. For example, alcohol has a much larger effect on our sleep than tech use (Bartel, Gradisar & Williamson, 2015).

But there are situations when tech use can affect sleep - and it’s like a recipe.

Here are the ingredients:

1. A human being that has vulnerable characteristics,

2. A phone (or in some instances a ‘videogaming device’)

3. A tech company who knows how to exploit vulnerable characteristics in people - and for whom, sleep is their enemy.

If you have all 3 ingredients, then you have someone who will continue to use their phone (or play their videogame) well beyond the time that their body says “Hey! I’m ready for sleep!”

And a lot of people - especially teens - have all 3 ingredients.

How To Change Evening Phone Use?

That title above was both a statement - and a question.

As a statement, it means our team has been able to to do just that - specifically, Kate Bartel’s final PhD study was able to convince teens to put their phone down earlier in the evening.

As a question, it means whilst this technique is incredibly effective, not all humans are motivated to do it.

Enter Meg’s new study …

It’s clear that Meg has learned the value of parents supporting their teens in healthy evening technology use. And we’ve also learned that ‘sleep is the enemy’ of many big tech companies trying to exploit people’s vulnerabilities.

Thus, in an effort to help young people curb their evening phone use, Meg intends to unite teens and their parents against a common threat to their sleep.

Big tech.

If you wish to learn more about the influence of big tech - like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter (amongst others) - I highly recommend watching The Social Dilemma … on of all places, Netflix.

Conclusions?

There were 2 other findings from Meg’s study that we wrote about here for our WINK Subscribers who receive these blogs in their Inbox each week. So we’d love it if you joined them and simply subscribed (see below) …

If you were to look at one of your hands right now - you’re looking at the number of research studies that have been trying to change a teen’s technology use for better sleep.

For context, you would need more than 20 hands attached to your body to count the amount of studies investigating young people’s tech use and sleep.

Kate and Meg are pathfinders. But they don’t have to be the only ones. Do they?

• Prof MG